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Educating and activating the grassroots to create a
nuclear-free future

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NO NUKES Y'ALL!

NUCLEAR WATCH SOUTH | FUKUSHIMA

STATEMENT OF DR. EDWIN LYMAN TO
SENATE ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS COMMITTEE

MARCH 16, 2011 ~ On behalf of the UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS, I would like to thank
Chairman Boxer, Ranking Member Inhofe, and the other members of the
Environment and Public Works Committee for the opportunity to provide
our views on the unfolding accident at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant and
its implications for nuclear power in this country.

The Union of Concerned Scientists would like to extend its deepest
sympathies to the people of Japan during this crisis.

While the ongoing situation in Japan should be a main focus of U.S
attention, we should not hesitate to ask ourselves whether we are doing
all that we can do to prevent a Fukushima-like nuclear disaster from
happening here.

Before proceeding, I would like to say that the Union of Concerned
Scientists is neither pro nor anti-nuclear power, but has served as a
nuclear power safety and security watchdog for over 40 years.

In the aftermath of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, the NRC
undertook a major overhaul of its rules to correct many of the
regulatory weaknesses that the accident revealed. In contrast, seven
years later, the Commission and the industry avoided learning any
lessons from the far more severe Chernobyl accident because of the
misleading claim that such an extreme release of radioactivity could
never happen at a plant of Western design.

However, the NRC and the industry cannot hide this time behind the "it
can't happen here" excuse. We have 23 plants of the same design. We have
plants that are just as old. We have had station blackouts.

We have a regulatory system that is not clearly superior to that of the
Japanese. We have had extreme weather events that exceeded our
expectations and defeated our emergency planning measures (Katrina).

We have had close calls (e.g. Davis-Besse) that were only one additional
failure away from becoming disasters. We have had full-blown disasters
in other industries (e.g. BP). We have suffered a devastating terrorist
air attack against our infrastructure for which we were completely
unprepared.

I would ask the Committee to imagine for a moment that the crisis
unfolding at Fukushima is taking place in their home states, and to
consider whether this is something that Americans should ever have to
endure under any circumstances.

If the answer is"no" — the right answer, in our opinion — then it is
incumbent on you to thoroughly investigate whether the risk of an
American Fukushima is really as low as the NRC and the industry claim.

But even though it will be a long time before we learn all the lessons
from the still-evolving disaster in Japan, it is not premature to
immediately take steps to reduce vulnerabilities that have long been
known by regulators but have not been addressed. I will offer a few
examples.

1. At least two spent fuel pools at the Fukushima plant have caught fire
and are releasing radiation into the atmosphere. These pools are on the
upper floor of these Mark I boiling-water reactors and are now open to
the air following explosions that breached the buildings around them.
The U.S. has 31 boiling-water reactors with similarly situated spent
fuel pools that are far more densely packed than those at Fukushima and
hence could pose far higher risks if damaged. The U.S. should act
quickly to remove spent fuel from these pools and place them in dry
storage casks to reduce the heat load and radioactive inventories of the
pools.

2. The Fukushima accident was precipitated by an earthquake and tsunami,
but the direct cause appears to have been a loss of both off-site and
on-site power supplies, a situation known as a station blackout. There
are many other types of initiating events that could cause such a
situation, including terrorist attacks. The NRC requires U.S. plants to
have the capability to cope with a station blackout for no more than
four to eight hours. We need to re-evaluate the adequacy of these
requirements and the effectiveness of their implementation.

3. Although the Japanese are engaged in truly heroic efforts to mitigate
the worst effects of this accident and reduce radioactive releases that
could harm the public, these efforts have only been partially effective,
are already resulting in life-threatening conditions for the workers on
site, and are likely to ultimately fail. U.S. nuclear plants have severe
accident management plans, but these plans are not required by
regulations and do not have to be evaluated by the NRC and tested for
their effectiveness. In the case of aircraft attack on a nuclear plant,
the NRC does require plants to have plans to cope with the loss of large
areas of the plant due to explosion and fire. These plans will have to
be re-evaluated in light of Fukushima to judge whether they can be
realistically carried out. In the meantime, the NRC should place a far
greater emphasis on preventing accidents and terrorist attacks rather
than trying to control them afterward.

4. Elevated levels of radiation have already been detected more than one
hundred miles from the release site. While these levels remain low, if
the accident continues to worsen then they could increase dramatically.
If there was a reactor accident in the United States, the emergency
preparedness measures that would directly protect the public, including
evacuation planning and potassium iodide distribution, are limited to a
10-mile radius. Whether this distance should be increased will need to
be reevaluated, as will the workability of emergency plans in the
context of natural disasters or terrorist attacks.
There are many other areas where we believe the NRC has allowed safety
margins to decrease too far. Now, not after an accident, is the time to
reconsider whether the NRC’s position on “how safe is safe” is truly
adequate to protect public health and safety.

Thank you for your attention, and I would be happy to answer any
questions you may have.